Art and theater reviews covering Seattle to Olympia, Washington, with other art, literature and personal commentary.
If you want to ask a question about any of the shows reviewed here please email the producing venue (theater or gallery) or email me at alec@alecclayton.com. If you post questions in the comment section the answer might get lost.

Friday, August 28, 2015

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen art by
Marty Fehl, and his new show at Brick & Mortar Gallery is quite a departure
from the paintings of his I saw years ago — a good and exciting departure.

Fehl’s new work consists of paintings and
installations based on motorcycles and motorcycle culture, or as the gallery
refers to it, moto-inspired art. The repeated term “psycho” in the show title
should also give readers a clue as to what to expect.

Anchoringthe left-hand wall as you enter the gallery are two
six-foot-by-four-foot realist paintings of parts of vintage Ducati motorcycles.
From five feet away they look like photo-realist paintings, but closer-in, brush strokes and paint build-up become evident. The
artist wanted these paintings to look almost like photographs but still be
about paint and the arrangement of shapes and colors on canvas rather than just
about the appearance of the machines, which he obviously loves.

The first of these paintings is called “The
Bevel Make Me Do It,” a clever pun. It is an extreme close-up with great
luminous metallic colors. It seems to the be cowl and parts of the motor. There
is a curved section that looks like tinted glass. I thought it might be a
montage of different parts, but I asked the artist and it is not. The extreme
close view makes it into something abstract and confusing, at least to me, but
attractive and beautifully painted.

The second of the two paintings is an even more
extreme close-up, so close that the motorcycle becomes an abstract
configuration in black and white with a few small areas of brown and tan.
Imagine a Franz Kline painting in which all the brush strokes are precise and
hard-edged. This is a strong painting.

There are two actual motorcycles in the show.
One of them is mounted by a leather-clad rider with a leather mask that looks
like a bird’s face with a long and menacing beak. He’s wearing goggles, and
there is a red light behind one of the lenses. The figure inside the clothing
is completely covered with leather: boots, helmet and gloves, so it is
impossible to tell what the figure is made of. It could be a mannequin, or it
could be sculpted of papier mâché or clay or almost anything. It is life-size
and convincingly human and surrealistic. According to a printed statement, the
beak-like mask is based on the masks medieval plague doctors wore. The leather
jacket is the remnant of one Fehl was wearing when he had a recent motorcycle
accident; the crash was captured on video and the video is also in the show,
projected on the back wall.

Also on the back wall is a green-faced painting
of Frankenstein’s monster, face only, floating in space with a little red
Ducati gas tank for an eye.

And there are dada-esque motorcycle helmets on
sculpture stands and a sculpture made from a strange motorcycle handle bar that
reaches almost floor to ceiling.

This show contains elements of pop art,
surrealism and dada, and is unlike anything else you’re likely to see in
Tacoma.

Also included in the gallery are works by
ceramic artist Steve Portteus, welder Josh Lippencott, and painter Laura Hanan,
all of which were in the previous show at Brick & Mortar. I would prefer
seeing more of Fehl’s work, but the inclusion of the other pieces is good for
people who missed the previous show.

David Wright as the judge, Helen
Harvester as Mayella Ewell, and Russ Holmes as Bob Ewell. Photos courtesy Harlquin Productions

The bar is set impossibly high for the stage play of “To
Kill a Mockingbird.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee and the
Oscar-winning film are each among the most popular and highly praised in the
history of American film and literature.

Playwright Christopher Sergel took on the challenge of
adapting “Mockingbird” for the stage, and Olympia’s Harlequin Productions is
now running it under the direction of Linda Whitney with three outstanding
child actors supported by a large cast of some of Southwest Washington’s
finest.

Eight-year-old Loren Kattenbraker plays Scout, the
loveable central character in the book and movie. She is amazingly expressive
and a joy to watch. Nick Hayes, a 7th grader who has appeared on
every stage in the Olympia area and even appeared in “Oklahoma” at Seattle’s
prestigious 5th Avenue Theater, is Scout’s big brother Jem. His
performance is near flawless. Fifth grader Annabelle Samson plays Charles Baker
Harris, aka, Dill, and she is delightful. It is also her second cross-dressing
role, the previous one being when the played a girl pretending to be a boy in
Olympia Family Theater’s “Orphan Train.” All three of these kids are terrific.

To say all that should be said about the rest of the cast
would take twice the space I’m allowed for the column. Aaron Lamb is solid and
believable as Atticus Finch. Scott C. Brown nails the role of Sheriff Heck
Tate. (He confessed to this reviewer, who grew up in Mississippi, that he was
unsure of getting the Southern accent right. His accent is perfect.) Helen
Harvester turns in a performance as the emotionally crippled Mayella Ewell that
is worthy of a Tony Award, and Russ Holme, a longtime favorite of Harlequin
audiences, pulls off one of his best performances ever as Bob Ewell. Comedian
and actor Morgan Picton shows just what a great actor he can be in the
challenging roles of the public prosecutor and as Boo Radley. (If he were not
the only bald actor on stage, nobody would suspect these two characters are
played by the same actor.) David Wright also does a superb job of playing two
quite different characters, the poor farmer Walter Cunningham and Judge Taylor.
And Robert Humes puts his heart into a heart-wrenching portrayal of the falsely
accused Tom Robinson.

Rounding out this terrific cast and each performing at the
top of their game are Edsonya Charles, Ann Flannigan, Korja Giles, Walayn
Sharples, and DuWayne Andrews.

In adapting the story for the stage, Sergel made the
dubious choice of having the neighbor, Maudie Atkinson (Flannigan) narrate the
story, which in the book and movie was done by Scout. Maudie is a wonderful
character, likeable and a rare voice of reason in a town full of bigots and
ignoramuses. But her narration was totally unnecessary, serving only to
moralize and slow down the flow of the story. Likewise, Sergel’s decision to
freeze the action during the mesmerizing court scene for a little scene with
Scout and Dill disrupted the story in a way that added nothing.

One other thing that marred an otherwise marvelous play
was overdoing the dumb-Southern-hick bit in the scene where the townsmen are
intent on lynching Tom Robinson. They turned a frightening scene into a comic
parody of stereotypical rednecks. Fortunately, Scout stepped up to talk
one-on-one with the lynch-mob leader and turned the scene into one of the most
touching in the play.

The set by Jeannie Beirne captures the feel of 1930s
Maycomb, Ga., in a beautifully stylized fashion and allows for complicated set
changes with actors moving pieces in full view of the audience in such a way
that is not at all distracting. Costumes by Darren Mills are authentic, and Amy
Chisman’s lighting is wonderful.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” is 2½ hours long with a 20-minute
intermission. It includes mature content and racially-charged language.

Friday, August 21, 2015

No wonder they fired me in Clarkton when I looked like this (Nashville, TN, all dressed up for a job interview).

Departing from my usual arts writing, I’d like to share this
with some of my friends.

Yes, I was a teacher for a brief moment a long time ago.

In 1970 I was hired to teach art in the tiny town of
Clarkton, Missouri. For a $200 bonus they also got me to direct a school play.
I had never before directed a play. The last (and only) play I had been in was
in the first grade when I was one of the dwarfs in Snow White.

In Clarkton, population approximately 2,500 at the time, I
taught high school art classes three days a week and junior high and elementary
art the other two days (high school and junior high shared a building and the
elementary school next door was connected to the high school by a covered
walkway). I at least got to spend enough time with my 10th, 11th
and 12th grade students to learn their names, not so with the
earlier grades where I felt I accomplished absolutely nothing; at best I was a
fun babysitter.

I did a pretty good job with the high school students, but I
have to admit that my classes got pretty wild. I was not good at disciplining
the students. My theory was that if you made the classes interesting enough,
discipline would not be necessary. That theory proved to be partially true, but
definitely not completely true.

My end-of-year evaluation gave me high marks on innovation
and knowledge of subject but ended with this statement from the principal: “The
noise from Mr. Clayton’s class, especially the laughter, is disrupting to other
classes. Not recommended for rehire.”

Thus ended my public school teaching career with the
exception of a few years substitute teaching in Nashville, Tennessee and
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where my inability to keep the kids in line was even
more of a problem.

After that I was an adjunct faculty member at the University
of Southern Mississippi for about three years and a half-time studio art
instructor and gallery director. And then I was laid off. That’s code for
fired. The reason given was that I had only an MA degree and the job required
an MFA, which is a terminal degree in studio art. Of course my MA was good
enough when they needed me. The real reason I was fired, which I heard through
the grape vine, was that the college hired some hotshot in another department
who agreed to come only if they also hired his wife, an art teacher. So she got
my job and I got the hell out of Mississippi—the end of my teaching career and
the beginning of a career as an artist and writer in Olympia, Washington.

Animal Fire Theatre’s annual Shakespeare in the Park

This
summer’s Shakespeare in the Park by Animal Fire Theatre tackles one of the
bard’s lesser known plays, King John.

It is a
difficult play to follow, primarily perhaps, because it is little known. Since
plays such as Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet are so celebrated it is much
easier to understand them, but since fewer people know who Philip the Bastard
and Lady Blanch and Lady Constance are, King John can be difficult to
understand. That’s why a synopsis is printed in the program and why director
Scott Douglas encouraged the audience to study the synopsis before the play starts.

Added to
that difficulty are the usual distractions of outdoor theater: passing trucks
and motorcycles, airplanes overhead, and the night I attended a dog off leash
who got excited and barked a couple of times while watching the play, which was
distracting but sort of funny, but then tried to join in a sword fight on stage,
which was not funny. Please, people, think twice about bringing your dog; and
if you do please leash them during the performance.

Yet one
other difficulty: one of the actors, Pug Bujeaud, got sick and was replaced at
the last minute by Jen Ryles, founder of Olympia Family Theater, who had to be
on book but did a commendable job of acting despite being hard to hear. Some of
the other actors were also hard to hear, exacerbated because the slope of the
ground meant much of the audience was sitting quite a distance from the stage
area.

Even with
these problems, it is an entertaining play. Typical of Shakespeare, it combines
history, tragedy and comedy and features larger-than-life characters. The
amount of bloodshed is considerably less than in many of Shakespeare’s
tragedies and history plays.

It begins when an ambassador from
France (David Shoffner) demands that English King John (Brian Hatcher) renounce
his throne in favor of Arthur, whom the French King, Philip (Dennis Worrell)
believes to be the rightful heir to the throne. War, intrigue, religious disputes and a marriage between Lewis (Maddox
Pratt), the son of King Philip, and King John’s niece, Blanche (J Benway) ensue
— all of which leads eventually to the poisoning of King John.

Hatcher is a
strong presence as King John, and Worrell is strong and fierce as King Philip.
The clashes between these two are like a standoff between two immovable
objects, as are the hot war of words between Elinor of Aquitaine (Ryle) and
Lady Constance (Christine Goode), mother of Arthur, who is fearless and strong
and backs down from no one.

One of the
most engaging characters is Philip (Brian Wayne Jansen), the bastard son of
Richard the Lionhearted, not to be confused with Philip the king of France. I
had a hard time keeping track of how Philip the Bastard fit in with the various
warring factions. He seemed at times to be a go-between or reconciler and at
other times a warrior for King John, but mostly he seemed to be looking out for
his own self-interests. Though it was difficult to understand his part in the
story, Jansen’s acting was great to watch. So was Kate Ayers'. She provided a
lot of comedy in the roles of Lord Pembroke and First Citizen, Warden of
Angiers, Brittany.

There are a
lot of gender busting roles in this production, including Allison Zoe Schneider,
who was a good young Arthur and doubled as Prince Henry and as a messenger, and
Maddox Pratt, who was outstanding as King Philip’s son, Lewis.

By-the-way,
Richard the Lion Hearted is the same Richard who was prominent in the Robin
Hood legends, but Arthur is not the Arthur from Camelot. Shakespeare was not concerned
with historical accuracy.

King John, 6: 30 p.m., Thursdays through Sundays through Aug. 23, Priest Point
Park, Olympia
(park in the lot by the playground on the west side of the park and walk into
the meadow behind the bathrooms). Free, donations
accepted.

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About Me

I am an artist and writer living in Olympia, Washington. I write an art review column, a theater review column and arts features for the Weekly Volcano, a community theater review column for The (Tacoma) News Tribune and regular arts features for OLY ARTS (Olympia).
My published novels are: This Is Me, Debbi, David; Tupelo; The Freedom Trilogy (a three-book series consisting of The Backside of Nowhere, Return to Freedom and Visual Liberties); Reunion at the Wetside; The Wives of Marty Winters; Imprudent Zeal and Until the Dawn. I've also published a book on art, As If Art Matters. All are available on amazon.com.
I grew up in Tupelo and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and have been living in the Pacific Northwest since 1988 where I am active in many progressive organizations such as PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).